


The Little Deaths

by wyrd_eater



Series: The Sartre Estate [4]
Category: Darkest Dungeon (Video Game)
Genre: Age Difference (~15 years), Canon-Typical Violence, Drug Use, Hand Jobs, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Light Comfort, M/M, Midlife Crisis (emphasis on crisis), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Hatred, Semi-Public Sex, Sexual Content, coping through sex, implied alcoholism, memory problems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:06:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26674858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wyrd_eater/pseuds/wyrd_eater
Summary: Dismas is dying. Not in a bright blaze of glory, but by inches. By pieces. Failing eyes, clumsy fingers, deadened hearing, a mind like a leaky bucket, all of the little deaths that come with aging. It's the price he pays for his continued survival.It's slow enough to ignore most days. Until a certain newcomer forces Dismas to confront his mortality, his expendability, and a dozen other sticky things.
Relationships: Dismas/Highwayman (Darkest Dungeon), Highwayman/Highwayman (Darkest Dungeon)
Series: The Sartre Estate [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1939003
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16





	The Little Deaths

**Author's Note:**

> Do I have any justification for this? Not really. Like most of my fic ideas, it was inspired by events in my personal play-through. Having Dismas and another Highwayman in the same party made me start thinking about how they might interact and, well... here we are.
> 
> I borrowed heavily from [A New Dictionary Of The Terms Ancient and Modern Of The Canting Crew](https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A39127.0001.001?rgn=main;view=fulltext;q1=canting+crew), which was originally published in 1698. It defines common slang terms used by the "undesirables" (such as robbers, beggars, sex-workers, etc) of the time. Basically a Ye Olde Urban Dictionary. I came across this a couple of weeks ago and knew I had to use it in something Dismas related. I included footnotes that define the more obscure terms. A surprising amount are still used today! Hopefully the footnote links work correctly, I've never attempted something like this. Let me know if any of them are broken!

He's new.

A lot of sorry bastards come and go through this miserable fucking place. Usually coming in the stagecoach and going in a shoddy coffin. So many that I can't remember faces or names. Wouldn't want to even if I could. 

But him. I would've remembered him.

Tanned skin. Young face. Little pockmark scars across his right cheek and up into his scalp. Grapeshot burn. Black hair, coarse and wild like grass that grows between stones. A little nick in his right ear. He stands like a man on the run. Relaxed, knees slightly bent, eyes darting around every now and then, one hand hidden beneath his stained coat. Always ready to turn tail and run at the first sign of trouble. Nervous, but hiding it under a devil-may-care grin and a broad stance. He flips a shiny coin to the bartender as he's passed a slopping flagon. He pulls away from the bar. My old bandit eyes pick out the shape of a flintlock and a dirk beneath the coat. A rogue's tools of the trade. He's a clever one, to sneak those past the heavy-handed bartender.

He catches my gaze. Brown eyes. They flick down, back up. I'm imagining that lopsided smile and careless nod. I must be slipping off the deep end. Hallucinations. Like those strange frenzied moments the old crusader had sometimes frothed himself into, talking to dead saints in dark corners.

He walks like he stands. Shifty, careful, smooth, looking into every corner without turning his head. My chest constricts to the rhythm of his stride. No. I don't think so. Open the hatch. Down goes the booze. I wipe the foam from my upper lip, slam the tankard down on the table, sink back further in my booth. He turns the corner, headed towards the gambling hall. Good. And that's where he'll stay if he knows what's good for him.

-

So goddamn cold. Winters are the worst here. Cove gets half-frozen. Snow makes the weald near impossible to march through. The warrens are slippery with frozen run-off. And the cold settles in the ruins like a living thing. Doesn't matter to the Lord. As he says, Darkness never rests, so neither do we. It's not like it's his foppish neck on the line. So, the expeditions continue. Hope the Lord picked a decent lot this time around. Don't feel like playing nanny.

"Good day."

FUCK!

I whirl so fast it makes me dizzy. Light above, my heart can't take all this thumping. _He_ stands in front of the signboard, neckerchief pulled down around his chin, like the bite of the wind doesn't even bother him. His nose and cheeks are flushed.

"Beauregard," he says.

"What?" It comes out like a growl. If he keeps smiling at me like that, I'm going to carve a permanent one into his face.

"That's my name. Beauregard." As if I didn't fucking hear him.

His hand is between us. I look at it. I look at him. Light, no... Any of them but this one.

"Didn't ask." Because I didn't. I don't want to know.

Beauregard - _forget_ it - tucks his hand into his coat pocket. "Is everyone here as neighborly as you?"

"Only the ones that care about keeping their heads." I lean up against the statue of the former Lord Sartre and cross my arms over my chest. I look him over without looking. He's so young. Barely a shadow of age over his face. You'd only know him as a man by the stubble on his jaw and the lines cropping up by his eyes. What was Lord Sartre thinking, letting some dew-eyed whelp come traipsing into this hell to play hero?

He catches me looking. _Catches_ me. That's a new feeling. He doesn't say anything, just raises an eyebrow and the side of his chapped mouth. It's too hot behind my neckerchief, but I'd rather face down a horde of swine on my own than pull it down. I flick my lucky coin out of my sleeve and let it dance on my fingers. Right. He's a rogue, same as me. Except he's younger, sharper, with fresher eyes and quicker hands than… _Oh_.

"Good morning, gentlemen." Here comes the bird, followed close behind by Alzer... Alza...? The fellow with a turban. Been here awhile, longer than most. The bird's as snug as ever in her heavy battle dress and mask, but Al's shivering, hands hidden in the big sleeves of his silk robe. Winter in the hamlet is a far cry from the hot desert sands, I'd wager.

"Hello, birdie. Al." I nod to them.

"Dismas," says Al, returning my nod. Damnit. Didn't need him to know that.

Beauregard - FORGET it - sticks his hand out to Al. "Beauregard. Pleased to meet you."

"Alhazred. Likewise." Al-ha-zred takes one hand out of his robe and shakes his. Quick and formal.

"And you are?" The whelp turns to the bird.

"Call me Doctor, Beauregard."

"She was booted out of university," I say, focused on the up and down of my coin. "She's as much of a doctor as I am."

"And yet I never hear you complaining while I'm stitching you back together."

"You're a physician? Then you must have...?"

"Aye. I spent near-on six years in Londin during the first surge. Two in Kyrie after that."

He whistles. "I'd say that makes you more of a doctor than most of the mountebanks[[1](note1)] roaming around now. University or not, that's damn impressive."

"You're damned right about that. You could teach this one," she nods her head at me, "a thing or two about manners."

I roll my eyes. Flattery... It won't get him far here.

"Now that we're all here, shall we track down the caretaker?" Alz...? It's already slipped from my mind. Al pulls a curling piece of paper out of his robes. "Lord Sartre has written up our supply order."

"No use in wasting daylight." I push myself off the statue and make my coin disappear. I force myself out in front of the group, not in the mood to make small talk.

"Where and what is it we're meant to fleece, exactly?" asks the whelp. "That Lord Sartre fellow mentioned ruins and relics. Why send us there? You I understand. You look to be a scholarly type. But the rest of us?"

I can't help the wicked grin that creeps across my face, safely hidden behind my neckerchief. No one's told him yet. It's a nasty impulse, I know. Some kind of sick sadistic streak, one I hadn't had before I had blundered my way into this hamlet. I'd always had a bit of a bite to be sure, but not like this. I'm relishing the thought of the frightened look on that whelp's face when he encounters his first walking dead. I'm trying to be better. I am. That's what I'd promised him. And I'd claw myself out of a pit by my fingernails if it meant keeping my last words to him. Just never thought it would be this hard. More and more of this place's filth creeps into my heart the longer I stay here. Soon, I won't be able to tell where the hamlet ends and I begin. If I even still can.

"There's a bit more than cobwebs in these ruins," replies the bird.

"Brigands?"

"Well... There _are_ a few brigands running around down there."

"You won't believe us until you see it for yourself," says Al.

"You're a mysterious lot," says the whelp. "How strange could it be?"

~

"What in Light's name were those things?!" The whelp is shaking in his boots, flintlock loose in his hand. His coat is dripping with foul juices. He's earned a nasty scratch down his cheek, courtesy of a dead swordsman. His eyes are blown wide, breath curling in thick white clouds, staring at the heap of bones at his feet. Empty sockets and chipped teeth leer back at him.

"Skeletons," answers the bird helpfully. She's rustling around amongst the dusty bones, picking out shiny stones and coins and tucking them away in her satchel.

"Reanimated corpses," adds Al. The reddish light of his skull is fading. I can still see the afterimage of his weird magic pulsing at the edges of my vision. He's a skilled sorcerer, but I could do without the iron taste his incantations leave behind.

"And... and... How did you...? I _saw_ him," he points at me, "take a sword across the gut! That should've killed him But... But... his skin... like it was _growing_ back together!"

I touch at my healed flesh through my torn shirt. It's bumpy and slick underneath my fingertips. It never quite goes back together right. Still, I'd never say no to Al's cursed flesh rite. Anything's better than dying here and risking becoming another piece in the Collection.

"Be a dear and stick these in your pack, please." The bird hands the whelp a handful of sparkling citrine bars. The whelp takes them, but doesn't put them away.

"It's a simple matter of reconstruction," Al says. "I remind the flesh of where it needs to be and it obeys."

"I... this... I can't..." The hand holding the citrine trembles. "We should turn back!"

Ghoulish satisfaction curls in my belly. Aren't I a wretched thing?

"You can leave, if you want. You won't get far, though."

He turns on me. "This isn't fair! No one told me that... that this is what I'd be doing!"

"And what did you have in mind? You answered the posting. I find it hard to believe you haven't heard any stories about what goes on here." I look to the bird. "How's the Lord pulling the buzzards[[2](note2)] in these days?"

The bird straightens up, dusting off her gloves. "Hm... I believe he's leaning into the 'treasure-hunting' and 'heroism' angle."

I shrug and look back to the whelp. "There's treasure to be sure, but it's not for us. As for 'heroism'... that's just a polite way of asking someone to die for you."

"Die?" His voice wavers.

"That's quite enough, Dismas." Al is frowning. That might've made me feel guilty, if I had any decency left.

"Indeed," chimes in the bird. "I seem to distinctly remember a certain thief nearly breaking down in tears after his first tangle with skeletons."

"Stuff it, butcher. Let's keep moving."

~

"Let me have a hit of those vapors, birdie. The old gun-arm's starting to ache."

We're huddled in the hallway in front of a set of rotting doors. The final room before we take a rest, we'd all agreed. The click of bones and the groan of long-suffering corpses reaches us through the tilted doorway. The bird stares at me, glass eyes reflecting the torchlight.

"What? You brought 'em, didn't you?"

"I did."

"Then what's the problem?"

"Have we forgotten what happened last time?"

Yes, I have. I hide my embarrassment with an easy shrug and a lie. "So I was a touch jumpy for a few days afterwards. What's your drift?"

"A _touch_ jumpy? You nearly put a bullet between Junia's eyes!"

Who? She said that like I should remember. I live in halves. Half-remembered and half-forgotten. One foot stepping forwards and the other in the grave. I scoff and roll with what she's tossed me.

"An accident! As if you've never caused any accidents."

"Uh-huh."

"C'mon, just a sniff. A little pick-me-up to get me through this last room."

"Light, you're stubborn. Fine. Don't come crying to me when it gives you the shakes afterwards."

She reaches into her satchel and withdraws a carefully wrapped glass bottle. She uncovers it. My nose tingles. What a beauty...

"What is it?" The whelp approaches, eyeing the reddish liquid.

"Does it matter?" I snap.

"Someone's a _touch_ cranky." Her mask tilts to the whelp. "It's a distillation of my own design. It quickens the mind and emboldens the muscles for a short period of time. There's a bit of a come-down, but it's not as bad as my earliest attempts. It's perfectly safe, so long as you take it under my supervision."

"Enough prattle," I interrupt. "Give it here."

Her gloved hand rests on the stopper. "Alright. But one sniff and one sniff _only_."

"Right."

 _Pop_. Curling red vapors dance out of the glass. Beautiful. She holds it up. Deep breath. It scorches my nostrils, burns my eyes, sends a harsh tingle through my face.

"Oh, that's it..." Numbness rolling over my face in waves. I roll my eyes back and laugh at the ceiling. Such vigor! Pure power licking through my limbs, making my chest sing, the weariness melting from my bones as easily as shaking off an old shawl. It's almost too much, that first wave, hands tingling and heart pounding so hard it feels like it might burst. It passes, scorching, and leaves behind a will of steel and limbs of liquid fire. Everything is clearer, purer, the shadows falling away under my fierce gaze.

"How do you feel?" asks the whelp.

"Never better!" I laugh again, my inhibitions unlashed.

His brows furrow, then relax. A slow, curious smile cracks over his face. "Pass that over here."

-

"HA HAA!" The aristocrat's head shatters in a cloud of dust and bone fragments. I am a dervish, a whirlwind, unstoppable, unkillable! Let them come! The taste iron, the acrid tang of gunpowder, the kick of my trusty flintlock in my hand, all proof that I am alive. Alive! I am alive!

_BOOM!_

The whelp blows the jaw off a towering skeleton from less than a foot away. He comes stumbling backwards, the force nearly sending him onto his ass. My ears ring. I catch him easily, hands under his armpits. We lock eyes. I can barely see the thin rim of brown around his pupils. His back against my chest, the slight tang of sweat, his flushed face, the heat of my own body...

"FM'LATGH, GRAH'N!"

Tentacles made of shifting shadow curl out of the ground, soaking up the torchlight as they drag the cultist witch down to the floor. Wet snaps and shrill screams. The bird's crooked knife slices her throat from ear to ear. The screeching fades to gurgling. The tentacles are gone, but their shapes still linger. The battle is over almost as soon as it had begun.

The whelp shrugs away my hands and stands on his own. We're both breathing hard. Just because the fight is over doesn't mean the aching vigor has faded. I spot Al setting up the fire, the bird laying out her bedroll. The whelp steps forwards.

"What's all this? Didn't you see how they crumbled? We can handle one more room!"

Al ignores him. The bird shakes her head and settles on the bedroll. "Sit down, Beauregard. That's the vapors talking. You and Dismas'll be the ones crumbling if we press on."

She's right, of course. I'm all too familiar with the fatigue that the vapors' fiery kisses leave behind. Doesn't mean I have to like the idea of sitting down and letting all this power drain from my blood, wasted. I go about laying out my bedroll, although I know I won't be sleeping much.

"Do as she says, whelp." I sit down, cross my legs, and ignore the buzzing at the back of my neck. "Recklessness'll get you killed down here."

"But we're so close!"

"And I'm close to sticking you if you don't sit down and shut your trap."

He sits down and shuts his trap. He doesn't look happy about it, but he does it. The bird organizes the rations, sorting them into neat little piles, four in total. Al's bent down near the base of the tented wood, breathing gently on a trembling spark. My hands itch. Can't sit still while I'm like this. I rummage through my pack and withdraw a length of thin string and tiny bells. I glance to the whelp. He's rubbing over and over again at the back of his neck, boot tapping restlessly. I stand and his gaze focuses on me.

"Do you know how to make bell-snares?"

He nods.

"Come make yourself useful, then."

He makes himself useful. He's good at this. Better than I am. He takes off his gloves and ties the snares with deft fingers. Over, down, under, back again, through the loop, and a quick tug to pull it closed. I used to be able to do them that quickly. Seems like time's finally wearing me down, like I always knew it would. Just didn't expect it to feel so much like dying. I choke on an unexpected surge of anger and disguise it as a cough.

When we return, the fire is crackling and the bird has the rations boiling in the pot. The corpses have been shoved out of sight. I sit down, the whelp at my right, the bird next to him, and Al on the other side of the fire. The bird is preparing herself a syringe, a ritual I've been privy to many times before. Al is scribbling away in a leather journal, an inkwell balanced on his thigh. How he'd managed to keep an inkwell intact through all of those scuffles is beyond me. More dark magic, undoubtedly.

And the whelp... The whelp is trembling like a leaf.

He's trying so hard not to show it. He's bent over his lap, sharpening his blade with a whetstone, breathing too carefully for it to be natural. His shoulders are drawn tight. His eyes dart around every now and then, chasing shadows, before returning to the blade. I suck in a breath between my teeth. Alright. Fine.

"Show me your palm." See? Are you watching from wherever you ended up, you self-righteous hypocrite? I'm trying.

"Huh?" The whelp looks up from his sharpening, hand stilling. He huffs. The corner of his mouth twitches up. 

Cocky bastard. This is difficult enough. "Your palm. Show it to me. I'll read your future."

He doesn't let go of his smirk, but he obliges. He tugs off one of his olive gloves and holds out his bare hand to me. His fingers are strangely long, delicate, out of place with his shoddy coat and scarred face. They're scarred in a few places, but they're nowhere near the sorry state of my battered mitts. I take it in my own. I have to split the inside of my cheek to fight down a shudder. Even this barest contact sends my spine buzzing and jaw tightening. When you're in the grip of the vapors everything becomes... too much. Beautiful and terrible all at once. I brace myself, focus, scan the lines of his palm.

I trace my gloved finger over the line at his thumb. He flinches at the touch. We both ignore it. "Ah, see here? See how this one stretches? How deep it is? You have a long, fruitful life ahead of you."

He scoffs. "Right."

I ignore him. I touch over a line near the top of his palm. "Hm... I see you've taken many lovers in your lifetime. You've been unfaithful... or an unrepentant beard splitter[3]." He snickers. "You're restless more than anything. Scared of settling down."

He leans forwards a little more, trying to see what I see. "You can't tell all of that from a palm." He still sounds skeptical, almost mocking, but his tone is colored with a hesitant kind of hope.

"Can't I?"

I can't. One of the brothel-misses back in Ploughsend, back when I was even younger than this whelp, had taught me how to do this. That lesson has long since been forgotten, but I can still remember the right things to say to draw people in and make them forget their doubts. Call it instinct.

"Look at the end here. You'll find someone true soon. A love to last you the rest of your lifetime."

I move to the line that splits his palm. "Your past has been marked by strife, but great fortune waits for you in your future." I look up at him. Our gazes connect. He looks... lost. Guilt creeps up on me. I'm an unrepentant liar, a sadistic fiend, I don't deserve to be looked at like this. "See? Things are not so hopeless. You have luck, love, and a long life to look forward to."

He looks to his palm, then back to me, eyes wide. His awed expression breaks into heavy laughter. "What a load of horse dung!" He takes his palm away, chuckling and sliding it back into his glove. "You almost had me convinced! But you can't bite a biter[4]!" His laughter is rough and wheezy, more like a rusty hinge or a squeaky wagon wheel than a proper laugh. Still... The way it chimes in my ears...

"Shut it, you ungrateful brat." I tug my neckerchief higher over my cheeks. Stop smiling, you old fool. "You'd usually have to pay good money for a reading like that."

"Flame's dead ashes, you're a convincing liar! You ever consider taking up acting?"

"Aye, y'know what? I _was_ lying." I shoot him as serious a look as I can imagine, while he titters away like a lady hearing her first dirty joke. "Your palm didn't say any of that nonsense. It... It said you'll die while..." My mouth quavers. Hold it together. "While riding below the crupper[5] with... an especially lusty stallion."

He tosses his head back and howls. Laughter echoes off the stone walls. His and my own. Sounds like a couple of cats in heat, but I'll be damned if it doesn't feel good. Like sliding into a warm bed after a cold night walk. Ah... I should fear that, but there's no room for fear when the vapors are burning high.

"Stew's done," interrupts the bird.

I'd almost forgotten... The bird doles it out. Al pulls himself from his journal to take a bowl with a quiet thanks. The whelp passes my serving to me, then accepts his own. Well-used to this near rotten fare, I scarf it down easily. The trick is to not breathe through your nose. It's gone almost as soon as I'd gotten my hands on it. Foul as it is, the stew warms my belly and fills my chest with a solid kind of energy, which the vapors can only imitate. Al eats in small bites, gentlemanly. The bird has unbuckled her mask and has set it aside to eat. Has she always looked so old? So tired? If she looks like that, I can only imagine the lines of age that mar my own face...

The whelp isn't eating. The stew is steaming next to his knee.

"Listen, lad, I know it's not exactly tea and crumpets, but you can't afford to be a prissy eater down here," I say, because weakness in one of us means weakness in all of us. Right.

"You didn't even try it," observes the bird flatly.

"Don't have an appetite," he mumbles.

"You'll have a fierce one in a couple of hours if you don't choke it down," I counter. "Once the vapors leave you, you'll feel half-starved."

"I can't." He shakes his head. "My gut won't settle." His hand curls over his stomach.

The bird gives up and turns back to her food. And what can I do? Force feed him? I unsheathe my dirk and run my thumb along its chipped edge. Ach, it already needs tending to by the smith. The walking bones wreak havoc on blades.

"Here." The whelp's hand is outstretched, his whetstone nestled inside. "Use my whetstone. 'Twill hone your edge." The corner of his mouth twitches. "Consider it payment for your reading."

"Right." I have my own whetstone. I take it anyways.

Say it. My throat constricts. Say it, you ungrateful, stubborn, no-good-

"Thanks." It sounds more like a grunt. But I said it. I hope you heard that.

Silence, blessed silence, save for the scrape of my whetstone. As soon as the bird's done with her stew, the mask goes back on. The fire burns low. We make ourselves as comfortable as we can on the stone. I lie down with the rest of them, but I don't sleep. My mind is on fire. I steal a few nips from my flask to ease the vapor-shakes. It doesn't work. The stones sing to each other down here. It's a lonely sound. These ruins are alive, that's something I'd realized long ago. I'd once confessed this to... the bird? The nun? The faces shift like sand. Whoever it had been had dismissed me outright. Just a superstitious, uneducated thief. But what else can explain the way these shifting tunnels and endless rooms rearrange themselves? I've been down here more times than I can remember and I’m certain I’ve never seen the same arrangement twice, though we always enter through the same point. The shadows move on their own here, regardless of where the light falls, pulsing like blood through the cracks in the mortar. And the feeling of being watched, which I'm more keen to feel than most, crawling up and down my spine no matter where we are down here. There's... something. Intelligent. Pressing at the edges of my mind. Waiting patiently to be let in.

 _Dismas_.

I sit up. The others are motionless lumps. I stand, slow and quiet. The whelp's head perks up. I don't acknowledge him. I wander off between the crumbling arches, carefully stepping over the bell-snares. I can hear him stepping behind me, his tread horribly familiar. The ball of the foot first, rolling slowly back onto the heel. My own pattern. I feel as though I am being stalked.

I stop just before it becomes too dark to see. I sit down with my back to the base of one of the arches, facing away from the fire. My ears prick at the rustle of cloth to my left as the whelp does the same. I should tell him off and send him back to the safety of the camp with his tail between his legs. I take my flask from the inside of my overcoat, unscrew the top, and quaff down several burning mouthfuls. It's the top shelf stuff, saved for long expeditions.

"You're shaking." The words are made with the edges of them, rather than the sounds between. It's an over-exaggerated way of speaking, less harsh than an actual whisper, something you naturally pick up when so many of your private moments are spent with your gang slumbering not too far away.

"Vapors," I half-whisper back, hoping he'll buy it.

He nods. I offer him the flask. He takes it, knocks back a swallow, and hands it back to me. I don't look at the way the outline of his throat bobs. Or the way he runs his teeth over his lower lip to collect the stray drops. I take the flask back. We trade back and forth this way for a bit. The whiskey warms my belly and massages my trembling limbs, some of the vapor's sharp prodding easing. I've been too harsh on the whelp, I know. Too prickly, too quick to judge, too eager to see him fail. Can I be blamed? On this expedition alone, I've missed more shots than I've landed. The slice of my dirk has gotten slower. My hearing has dulled. An antiquated rogue. I haven't told Lord Sartre and I can't think of anyone who would have noticed or even bothered to tell him. But that Lord has a way of finding things out, things he has no right to know. I'm all too aware that I'm training my replacement. No use in keeping a misfiring piece of equipment around past its time. Had I still been hunting along the pad, I'd have already been put down. I shouldn't take this out on him. He isn’t the one graying my hairs. The resentment burns hot all the same.

"How long have you been here?"

"Too damn long." Truthfully, I can't remember. Some days, it feels like just yesterday I'd stepped off that stagecoach. Others, it feels like I've never been anywhere else but here, the memories of my life before slipping through my fingers like water. I cap the flask. That's enough of that. I don't need to be losing my head in front of this whelp.

"You ran with the canting-crew[6] afore this?"

"Aye."

"Which gang?"

"The Bitter Brothers." Why am I telling him this? Because there's no one left to tell. Because I am entirely predictable.

"That was a mean lot."

"Was?"

"You didn't hear?"

There's more to worry about here than gossip from the old world. I hold my tongue and shake my head.

"The Bitter Brothers got nabbed last spring. They'd run off with the wrong gentry-mort[7], thinking they'd ransom her. Turns out her father was an upright man[8] afore he turned his earnings into a cozy title. They rounded them up outside Kiteborough. He had the whole gang dancing the hempen jig for Jack Ketch[9] within a fortnight. Weren't even anyone left to pay their six and eight[10]."

My ears warm to the familiar cant. Echoes of my youth, spent docking at bawdy-houses, taking as I pleased and giving none back... I'd almost forgotten the old words. Hearing them again, much as they remind of things I'd like to forget, feels like coming home. Even if that home's filled with ill-gotten gains and tacky with blood...

"They played it loose. Only a matter of time."

"Didn't fancy them much, eh?"

I shrug. I'd been half-raised by these men, from a kinchin-coe[11] to a proper rogue, but I held little fondness for them. That was the way with the canting-crew.

He goes on. "I ran from my own after a strip-job went belly-up. Nasty bit of business. Left a bad taste in my mouth."

I know that taste all too well. I run my hand through my hair. Of all the things that had to stick in this soft head of mine... 

"When I thought of what it'd be like to take up honest work... Well... I imagined guarding merchants. Keeping an eye on gentlemen's daughters. Not... _This_." His voice quavers on the last word. I risk a glance. He's pressed his head into his hands, staring down at the stone.

My hand is on his shoulder. My heart kicks. The vapors. Just the vapors. I squeeze. I may as well sign my own death-warrant. He sucks in a shuddering breath that tugs at some long-buried impulse. His gloves paw at his eyes.

"Don't go breaking on me, now." Where is the softness in my voice coming from? Not from me, the brute who'd mocked him no more than a handful of hours ago. "We'll be through this and back to the hamlet afore you know it. I've lived through worse."

His shoulder jumps beneath my hand. His glove moves to his mouth, stifling cries to keep from waking the others. Little gasps and choked whimpers. My arm slides around his upper back, each gained inch another spike to my gut. I wrap my hand around his far shoulder.

"Brace up, lad, it's not as bad as it seems. Think of the gold you'll have by the end..."

His hair brushes up against my cheek. He smells of smoke and musky sweat. He clings to the front of my shirt. I am as still as a statue, stricken by a sudden feeling of betrayal. Betrayal? What am I betraying? He’s muttering something, but his throat is too thick with tears and pitched too low for me to make it out. He tucks into me like a babe, knees pulled close to his chest. I stare out into the darkness. Blood quickens, ears burn like a pair of candles, the cravings I thought I'd banished long ago gnaw beneath the skin...

I'm not sure when I began humming, but I am. It's an old lullaby, one of the few my old dam had sung to me. The words have long escaped me, but the shape of the tune and the quiet love behind it is still familiar. I run my hand up and down his arm, hardly daring to breathe. I am going to burst into flames. I would deserve it.

The moments roll by. His shuddering fades, my humming fading with it. He sucks down an uneven breath. He should be moving. Sitting back. Acting like that didn't just happen. It what's you're meant to do. He's not. He's lingering by my breast, breathing steady, curling heat through my shirt. I should shove him off. He shifts up, face little more than a smudge of grayish shadow, teeth catching a glint of firelight, leaning closer, a finger tugging at my neckerchief. I should run away.

I should, but I won't.

He tastes horrible. Stale breath and old meat. I am lost to it. I wrap my hands around the back of his head, dig my nails into his nape, hold him there while our lips slop over one another, teeth scraping, messy and desperate and just as good as I'd imagined. Warmth floods from cheeks to chest, made all the more horrible and wonderful by the vapor's pulsing. My teeth catch on his lower lip and tease out a grunt from the back of his throat. Hands brace themselves on my shoulders as a sturdy weight settles over my hips, heat surrounding me. Heavy throbbing beneath layers and layers of clothes, so far away and all too close. _Stop, stop, stop_ , says my good sense. _Keep going even if it kills you_ , says my loneliness.

His hand is already at my belt. Deft fingers make quick work of it, then undo the front of my trousers, making me wonder at how often he's done precisely this. His hand slips inside and then there's no room for anything other than the dry burn scorching through my lower half. I dig my nails in harder and shove my tongue between his lips, a groan building in the back of my throat, begging to be released. I hold it. Can't disturb the others. The touch of his glove is rough, unbearable with how sensitive I am. His hands, those long fingers, I want, I _need_ …

He tears his lips away with a ragged breath. Drool leaks over my chin. My hands are shaking as I rip off his glove. He lets loose a fat drop of spit between us, slicks it over me, his hand warm and welcoming. My head thumps back against the stone. I dig my teeth into my lower lip. An undignified whine, one I would have done anything to keep down, slips out. My hands reach for his belt, fumbling in the dark. He exhales heavily, a sound suspiciously close to a laugh. He bats my useless hand away and finishes the job for me. He shuffles closer, shifting the grip of his fingers, lining up our hips so that-

I haul him back to my mouth, so fierce that I almost chip a tooth on one of his. He sags against me, hand moving faster, breaths heating up what little space exists between us. I roll into the heat, good because it's so painful, because I don't deserve anything else than stolen moments like this, hands sliding under his coat and pressing at his back. Dizzy, because I can't get a full breath down, because I can feel the way his body is shuddering, can feel the blind curl of his tongue against mine, the rasp of coarse cloth. Heat builds, unbearable, desperate to claw its way out of my gut. His hard body ruts against mine, one hand at my neck. My nails scrabble down the back of his shirt. So good, so good, so good, _so good_!

I am undone. Hips stutter, lungs burn, fingers claw, eyes roll back, then a flood of ecstasy, like I haven't experienced in years. He trembles on top of me, teeth nearly biting my tongue in half, as wet warmth flows over my middle. I break away and gasp down cold air. His head falls against my shoulder, his grip loosens, his body slumps. He tilts his face into my neck.

"Dismas..." His breath wafts over my ear.

_Too much._

I press at his side. He takes the hint and shifts off. I ignore the cooling mess in my trousers and tie them closed, then buckle my belt. The rush has left behind a gnawing emptiness, a lingering feeling that I have done something horribly wrong. Shame drips down the back of my throat. A belt buckle clinks next to me. I stand, weak at the knees, ignore his gaze, and return to the campfire. I crawl onto my bedroll, chest hollow and mouth dry. Why? Why, why, why, why would you do that? Which do you hate more, yourself or the poor lad you used to fill that rotten hole you call a heart?

Gentle footsteps. The rustle of a coat. I shut my eyes. Too much. It's all too much.

Somewhere, between the groans of old earth and the distant clang of metal and the hoarse howling and the buzzing behind my eyes, I find room to dream. Smooth prayer beads. Rough hands. Cold earth. Warm eyes.

~

1 Mountebank: A swindler specializing in fake medicine.  [ return to text ]

2 Buzzard: a foolish person, easily drawn in by lies.  [ return to text ]

3 Beard splitter: an enjoyer of women.  [ return to text ]

4 Bite a biter: to rob a rogue, cheat a cheater, beat someone at their own game.  [ return to text ]

5 Ride below the crupper: a euphemism for sex (a “crupper” is the part of a horse’s kit that keeps the horse’s tail erect)  [ return to text ]

6 Canting-crew: a catch-all term for the criminal element of England.  [ return to text ]

7 Gentry-mort: Gentlewoman (belonging to a land-owning family)  [ return to text ]

8 Upright-man: the leader of a gang of rogues, swindlers, or some other brand of charlatan. Well-respected even outside their gang, receives the first share of any loot.  [ return to text ]

9 Jack Ketch: an executioner so infamous for his cruel/botched high-profile executions that his name became synonymous with all executioners.  [ return to text ]

10 Six and eight: the fee charged to the kin of an executed criminal to return the body to the family or give it a proper burial.  [ return to text ]

11 Kinchin-coe: young boys who have run away from their apprenticeships and are taught to steal by older rogues.  [ return to text ]

**Author's Note:**

> This was a blast to write, honestly. I hope the canting-crew slang wasn't too jarring, I tried to pepper it in as naturally as I could. God, I hope the footnotes worked. I spent an embarrassing amount of time putting them in, testing them, etc... I'm definitely not a tech-savvy person, lol.
> 
> Anyways, thank you so much for reading! Any thoughts or feedback are greatly appreciated :)


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